Endgame

Their guns spark in their hands, then go inert. No electronic firing mechanisms, no computer-aided targeting. But since they specialize in hand-to-hand, they don’t seem overly troubled. Firing in pairs, we take out ten before they cross the yard. And then they’re on us, thirty to twelve.

I vault into a fighting crouch, discarding my gun. Knife and shock-stick in hand, I brace for the charge. Adrenaline pounds through me like a second pulse in my ears. Vel is nearby; so is March. They’ve flanked me to keep the bigger centurions from surrounding me. I appreciate that, even as I swing into the fight.

The shock-stick hums in my hand, but it’s not going to be sufficient. I can’t kill them on my own. Fortunately, Vel’s hand-knives are sharp enough to tear chunks out of their armor, and he’s strong enough to knock them the hell away from me. I want to help, but I don’t mean to be stupid about it. So I defend as best I can, a distraction if not an ass-kicker of men in armor.

I wait for opportunities. When March cracks a centurion’s helmet off, I slip into the opening and lay my shock-stick upside his head. When he drops in convulsions, I take a knee, ducking a blow aimed at my head, and cut his throat. There’s a centurion running at me while the melee rages, and I wheel low, taking his legs out from under him. What I know about combat amounts to making my size and speed work for me. When he hits the ground, he loses sight of me because helmets limit your peripheral vision. I jam my knife into the gap between armor and helmet. Twist, and the sharp stink of copper scents the air.

Another down.

Xirol cries out. He’s got three on him, and he’s La’heng, not a former merc or a bounty hunter. I hurdle a corpse without thinking. Then another. The SpecForce Pyro tries to help him, but his control isn’t the best, and he sometimes cooks things he isn’t trying to, so he doesn’t dare light everything up, or we might all go boom.

Xirol’s uniform is already bloodstained when I get there. He falls, but I can’t tell how badly he’s injured. The three elite turn on me, thinking I’m more of a threat than I am. Just out of range, I stop and beckon them on. Come on, you bastards. Leave him alone. Through the visors, I can see they’re amused at my challenge. Compared to three hardened veterans, I look laughable, wearing Mishani’s pretty face with her doe eyes.

“I think I’ll keep this one,” the first growls. “For a little while at least.”

“Until you break her,” another laughs.

The Pyro lays down a line of fire between us. I cut a glance at him, half-impressed, half-worried. Like Sasha, his face is clammy-pale, and sickness swirls in his eyes. Mary, I’m glad I have the grimspace gene. It would suck to be Psi.

“Come get me,” I yell, backing off.

As long as I get them away from Xirol, it’ll be—

Deliberately, the biggest one turns, grabs his knife, and jabs it into Xirol’s chest. I scream because the flames are now my enemy. If he wasn’t dead before, he is now, and I want to kill these bastards with my bare hands, to peel their skin from their muscles, and break their bones. It was such an evil, calculated cruelty.

Part of me says, It’s no different than what you do with your knife, finishing those you drop with the shock-stick, but I don’t want to think about all the ways I’m like these centurions. They are the enemy. They are the monsters. They have to be, or I can’t do what I must. By the time the centurions skirt the flames, Vel and March are beside me again.

Working together, we kill them. I play my part with mechanical confidence. Thrust, parry, retreat, block, dodge, see the opening—destroy. Around us, the battle rages, but I can’t hear the cries anymore. I’m lost in my own head, where the sobs sound louder than a ship engine, rising and falling like the sea.

CHAPTER 48

“Are you certain?” Loras asks hoarsely, a few days later.

I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. March rubs my back, as we all listen for the crackle of the comm. We’re parked at the edge of range, so the connection’s tetchy at best. Then it comes.

“Affirmative. They brought the whole mountain down.”

The base is gone. Damn the fragging Imperials. They have MOs, too, but unlike us, they don’t hesitate to use them.

“How did they find it?” Zeeka asks.

“It must have been Bannie,” Loras says heavily. “They broke her.”

Which is precisely why the cells run as they do, independently, so the only thing members can betray is the location of the base. And now it’s gone. I can’t get my head around it. I rub my temples.

We abandoned the Imperial shuttle a few days back, filling our own cache with the stolen weapons. The MO can be transported on our stealth craft or deployed from here. Loras’s grim expression indicates he favors immediate retaliation.

Farah puts a hand on his arm. “Take a day. Reflect. Decide if this is the best strategy or if it’s revenge.”

He nods curtly.

“How many did we lose?” I ask.

There was the skeleton crew, of course, and anybody who might’ve been on layover for R&R, gear, or training protocols. Constance. Constance is always there. Oh, Mary. Maybe it’s stupid to cry because by other people’s standards, she wasn’t a real person. To me? To me, she was. Tears well up, and I knuckle them away, not wanting to distract the others. Zhan, too, was permanently assigned to base. I remember how committed he was to the cause, how passionately he cared about freeing the La’hengrin.

Vel spreads his claws in an impossible to know gesture. “There is no way to determine how many were inside at the time of the attack.”

“Pull up the bounce,” Loras orders. “Local news should be covering this. This is a huge Imperial victory.”

Since we’re in the field, there’s no entertainment suite, just Vel’s handheld, but it’s top-of-the-line. With some tinkering, he tunes in, and the vid comes up. The Nicuan presenter rambles about some upcoming party, who’s wearing what this season, and who was spotted on whose arm last night. Just as I’m about to click it off in disgust, Vel stops me. Different music plays, heralding a shift in the tone of the broadcast.

“Yesterday evening, the first cohort deployed massive ordnance against a hidden base filled with terrorists. They encountered little resistance, and the operation went off without a hitch, demonstrating the bravery and skill of our military. They have since released footage…” She discusses the location of the base and how things went before cutting to the canned feed.

It’s grainy, low-quality, but I recognize the landscape. I’ve flown over that ground many times. The drone-cam hovers well out of the blast radius, waiting. I hear the missile before I see it, a rumble-whine that zings past, arrowing toward its target. Death should be more dramatic; there should be a rush of flames, but when it hits, the mountain trembles, then collapses inward. I can’t see the force that killed so many of our brave soldiers, most of whom hardly had a taste of hard-won freedom.

“Is there a chance anybody survived?” Zeeka asks.

Farah answers, “Unlikely. I’m sorry.”

The Special Forces guys huddle up, whispering. They’re making plans for revenge, whatever Loras decides. This won’t go unanswered. Sasha might kill himself teaching the Imperials a lesson, and March would never forgive me for that.

“Take a breath.” I put a hand on Sasha’s shoulder.

Over the turns, I’ve come to care about this kid. I don’t want him to go out in a blaze of glory. His gift could kill him if he doesn’t manage it, and I fight the impulse to lecture him. But then, he’s not a child anymore. This life has seen to that.

“It’s not right,” he chokes out. “Those people, they never saw it coming. You should have a chance, you know? You should be able to fight.”

And what the hell do I say to that? Because he’s right. The shine to his eyes makes mine worse, and I open my arms, because I’m here, and he could use a hug. I figure he might tell me to frag off because he doesn’t want to look soft in front of his buddies. Instead, he takes a couple of steps toward me and hugs me hard, digging his face into my shoulder. Sasha pats my back and makes comforting noises, like he’s doing this for me. I don’t dispute it because maybe he is. Maybe I do need him.

I can’t see for Sasha’s shoulder; he’s taller than I am. But I hear other soldiers fighting back their own tears. This is so fragging hard because we don’t know who to mark MIA. There are no records. No names on a list. I wish there were.

A few minutes later, Sasha asks, “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

When I step back, he’s got his grief under control. So do I. March watches with his customary stoicism. He’s lost men before, sometimes his whole company. Now I understand on a visceral level why he hates Nicuan nobles, and I admire him all the more because he put aside that loathing to do what was best for Sasha.

“What’s the plan?” I ask.

We’ve been camped here, outside the city, waiting for word, but Loras plays his cards close to the vest. When he hears whatever he needs to, then we move. And then maybe he’ll confide his strategy.

“Let’s eat and get some sleep,” Farah says.

“Excellent,” Hammond mutters. “More paste.”

Angrily, his squad-mates remind him he has nothing to bitch about, especially compared to those who were inside the base. That does shut him up, and he subsides into a low simmer while we all suck down packets of tasteless goo. But it’ll keep us alive until something better comes along.

Who knows how long that will be?

Warmth in my head signals March’s arrival. I glance at him sitting quietly beside me. You all right?

I nod. We have to retaliate, don’t we?

Sooner or later. There’s no way to win this without proving the resistance is willing to do whatever it takes.

That includes merciless slaughter. It’s not a question.

It does. Nicuan has never been known for its compassion or restraint. Their vendettas are legendary.

I’ll kill your family, friends, and anybody who ever had kaf with you?

Pretty much.

Dull pain throbs behind my ears. I hate this. We were just starting to get to a place where they had to take us seriously. Now the cities will be buzzing with how the centurions are kicking resistance ass.

March lifts a shoulder. It’s all propaganda, love. This isn’t a permanent victory. It’s a setback.

A setback, he calls it. This is fragging catastrophic. Now we have no way to coordinate troop movements, no central intelligence. The best we can do is pass messages on the short-range bounce and hope they reach the intended parties. This is a crippling blow.

Do you even care that Constance is gone? I’m sorry as soon as I think it. I expect him to withdraw from the sharpness of it, but he doesn’t.

I do. She was special. We wouldn’t have survived the Morgut War without her.

Yeah. People would think it’s weird to mourn an AI, wouldn’t they?

He brushes a gentle hand across my hair. Who gives a shit what people think?